Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
1. A method to dynamically establish a performance community of distributed network devices, the method comprising: receiving a routing communication in accordance with a routing protocol, wherein the routing communication includes an identifier associated with a network device that sent the routing communication and a uniquely defined routing protocol community value that indicates the network device that sent the routing communication is capable of responding to performance probes used to monitor performance of a network; updating performance community information to incorporate the network device that sent the routing communication into the performance community; and sending a performance probe to the network device identified by the identifier to collect network performance statistics.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein receiving the routing communication includes receiving a plurality of routing communications that each identify respective network devices that are capable of responding to performance probes and further comprising dynamically generating data to identify the network devices that are capable of responding to performance probes in response to the routing communications.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the routing communication further includes routing information describing a topology of the network.
4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: generating an outbound routing communication in accordance with the routing protocol; and sending the outbound routing communication to the network device associated with the identifier via the routing protocol, wherein the outbound routing communication identifies at least the sending network device as a supporter of performance monitoring.
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising generating the performance probe to include a timestamp that indicates a time at which the probe was sent.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein sending the performance probe comprises sending a plurality of performance probes.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein each of the performance probes is addressed to a common destination network device.
8. The method of claim 6 , wherein each of the performance probes is associated with the same quality of service level.
9. The method of claim 6 , wherein sending the plurality of performance probes comprises sending the plurality of performance probes at a periodic rate over an interval of time.
10. The method of claim 6 , wherein sending the plurality of performance probes comprises: sending a first performance probe having a first quality of service level to the network device; and sending a second performance probe having a second quality of service level to the network device.
11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: receiving a response to the performance probe from the network device; adding a timestamp to the response to indicate the time of reception of the response; and storing information contained in the response.
12. The method of claim 11 , further comprising forwarding the stored information to a centralized computing device for computing comprehensive network performance statistics.
13. The method of claim 11 , further comprising: computing network performance statistics from the information contained in the response; and forwarding the network performance statistic to a centralized device for computing comprehensive network performance statistics.
14. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: receiving an inbound performance probe from the network device; and sending a response to the inbound performance probe to the network device, wherein the response to the performance probe includes the received performance probe and a timestamp indicating the time of reception of the inbound performance probe.
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the network performance statistics includes at least one of network delay, network jitter, network throughput, network availability and network packet loss.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the routing protocol comprises one of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Intermediate System-Intermediate System (ISIS), and Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the routing protocol community value comprises a BGP community attribute that indicates the network device that sent the routing communication is capable of responding to performance probes.
18. A network device comprising: a processor; a first data structure to store routing information that describes a topology of a network; a second data structure to store performance community information that identifies one or more network devices that are capable of responding to performance probes used to monitor the network; and a routing communication manager executing on the processor, wherein the routing communication manager receives a routing communication that identifies at least one route within a network and a routing protocol community value that indicates that a network device that sent the routing communication is capable of responding to performance probes used to monitor the network, updates the routing information of the first data structure to include the route identified in the routing communication and updates the performance community information of the second data structure to include the network device that sent the routing communication as one of the network devices capable of responding to performance probes.
19. The network device of claim 18 , wherein the routing communication manager of the network device generates an outbound routing communication in accordance with the routing protocol, and sends the outbound routing communication to at least one of the one or more network devices identified in the second data structure via a routing communication protocol, wherein the outbound routing communication identifies the network device as capable of responding to performance probes.
20. The network device of claim 19 , wherein the outbound routing communication includes an identifier associated with the network device and a routing protocol community value that indicates the network device is capable of responding to performance probes.
21. The network device of claim 18 , further comprising a performance monitoring manager that collects network performance statistics by sending one or more performance probes to at least a portion of the one or more network devices identified in the second data structure.
22. The network device of claim 21 , wherein the performance probes include a timestamp indicating a time at which the performance probe is sent.
23. The network device of claim 21 , wherein the performance monitoring manager sends a plurality of performance probes to one of the network devices identified in second data structure.
24. The network device of claim 23 , wherein each of the plurality of performance probes is associated with a same quality of service level.
25. The network device of claim 23 , wherein the performance monitoring manager sends each of the plurality of performance probes at a periodic rate over an interval of time.
26. The network device of claim 21 , wherein the performance monitoring manager sends a first performance probe associated with a first quality of service level to a first one of the one or more network devices identified in the second data structure and a second performance probe associated with a second quality of service level to the first one of the network devices.
27. The network device of claim 21 , wherein the performance monitoring manager receives a response to at least one of the performance probes, adds a timestamp to the response to indicate a time of reception of the response, and stores information contained in the response.
28. The network device of claim 27 , wherein the performance monitoring manager forwards the stored information to a centralized computing device for computing comprehensive network performance statistics.
29. The network device of claim 26 , wherein the performance monitoring manager computes the network performance statistics from the information contained in the response and forwards the network performance statistics to a centralized device for computing comprehensive network performance statistics.
30. The network device of claim 20 , wherein the performance monitoring manager receives an inbound performance probe from one of the network devices identified in the second data structure and sends a response to the inbound performance probe, wherein the response includes the inbound performance probe and a timestamp indicating the time of reception of the inbound performance probe.
31. The network device of claim 20 , further comprising a processor and wherein at least one of the routing communication manager and the performance monitoring manager comprises a software process executing on the processor.
32. The network device of claim 20 , wherein at least one of the routing communication manager and the performance monitoring manager are executed in hardware.
33. The network device of claim 20 , further comprising a dedicated service card that implements the performance monitoring manager.
34. The network device of claim 18 , wherein the network performance statistics include at least one of network delay, network jitter, network throughput, network availability and network packet loss.
35. The network device of claim 18 , wherein the routing protocol comprises one of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Intermediate System-Intermediate System (ISIS), and Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
36. A system comprising: at least one network device that receives routing communications in accordance with a routing protocol, wherein at least a portion of the routing communications include identifiers associated with network devices that sent the routing communications and routing protocol community values that indicate that the network device are capable of responding to performance probes used to monitor performance of a network, wherein the network device updates performance community information to incorporate the network devices that sent the routing communication into a performance community and sends performance probes to the network devices associated with the identifiers to collect network performance information; and a statistical computing device that aggregates performance information from the network devices and computes collective network performance information for the network based on the aggregated performance information.
37. The system of claim 36 , wherein the statistical computing device displays the collective network performance statistics to a user.
38. The system of claim 37 , wherein the statistical computing device displays the network performance statistics to the user in real-time.
39. The system of claim 36 , wherein the routing protocol comprises one of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Intermediate System-Intermediate System (ISIS), and Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
40. The system of claim 36 , wherein each of the at least one network device collects performance information by sending performance probes to at least a portion of the network devices associated with the identifiers, receiving responses to the performance probes, and adding timestamps to the responses to indicate the time of reception of the responses.
41. A network device comprising: a processor; a routing communication manager executing on the processor that receives routing communications in accordance with a routing protocol, wherein at least a portion of the routing communications include identifiers associated with the network devices that sent the routing communications and routing protocol community values that indicate that the network devices are capable of responding to performance probes used to monitor performance of a network; and a performance monitoring service card that manages performance sessions with the network devices associated with the identifiers by sending performance probes to the network devices to collect network performance statistics.
42. The network device of claim 41 , wherein the performance monitoring service card generates performance probes and sends the performance probes to the network devices associated with the identifiers to collect network performance statistics, wherein each of the performance probes include a timestamp indicating a time at which the respective one of the performance probes was sent.
43. The network device of claim 41 , wherein the performance monitoring service card receives a response to at least one of the performance probes, adds a timestamp to the response to indicate the time of reception of the response, and stores information contained in the response.
44. The network device of claim 41 , wherein the performance monitoring service card receives an inbound performance probe from one of the network devices associated with a respective one of the identifiers and sends a response to the inbound performance probe, wherein the response to the inbound performance probe includes the inbound performance probe and a timestamp indicating the time of reception of the inbound performance probe.
45. The network device of claim 41 , wherein the routing communication manager updates performance community information to establish a performance community that includes the network devices that sent the routing communications, and wherein the routing protocol comprises one of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Intermediate System-Intermediate System (ISIS), and Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
Unknown
July 26, 2011
Browse 5M+ US patents with plain-English claim translations and AI-generated analysis.